The Different Road

Some folks take journeys to places regarded as sacred.  The Holy Land is high on the list of places many Christians want to visit.  Others might choose something a little closer to home like a monastery, or a mountain retreat center where some celebrity spiritual leader is teaching.  And, of course, there are many folks who simply find themselves living out their lives in the places where they seem to be put and there they experience the years as a journey of the heart.   

While I did not recognize it in the beginning, retirement not only opened the door to a different way of life, but it sent me forth on a spiritual journey which has taken me in a direction I could never have anticipated.  What I must also confess is that I had no idea where I was going when I set out and neither am I really sure where I am going now that I am well on my way in this part of the journey God has called me to walk.  More and more there is growing within me an awareness that God calls us to go to know not where.   

It was surely that way with Abraham, that great sojourner in Biblical history.  It has also been that way with many of the saints who went from cities to deserts, or from civilized places to the wild places on the edge.  Long years ago when I first said "Yes" to the "Follow me"  of Jesus, I could not grasp a call to just go.  I needed some sense of where.  What is different now after journeying this far is the realization that the call of Christ is never to some place defined as where, but to wherever the road takes us.